Thursday, September 12, 2013

Tallest U.S. mountain a bit shorter

America’s tallest mountain a bit shorter

The highest mountain in North America, Mount McKinley, is in the Alaska Range.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

North America’s tallest peak is 83 feet shorter

The 20,320 height had stood since 1952

Project will produce 11,000 new maps of Alaska by 2016

(CNN) — North America’s tallest mountain has lost some of its stature — 83 feet of it to be precise.

Alaska’s lieutenant governor announced Wednesday that new mapping technology puts Mount McKinley at 20,237 feet rather than the 20,320 it was pegged at.

“That’s 83 feet shorter than we thought,” Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell said in a statement. She made the announcement Wednesday at a symposium of the International Map Collectors’ Society in Anchorage.

The 20,320 height had stood since 1952, when the mountain was measured using a technology called photogrammetry, Treadwell’s announcement said.

The new height was measured last year with a radar mapping system deployed by the Statewide Digital Mapping Initiative in cooperation with the U.S. Geological Survey. The project will produce 11,000 new maps of the 49th state by 2016, according to the statement.

Alaskans, including two who’ve climbed Denali, as it is called in Alaska, were unfazed by the news.